Harvey Stahl's posthumous book issues from two decades of patient and probing dedication to the magnificent Psalter of Saint Louis. As befits this royal manuscript, with its elaborate prefatory cycle of seventy-eight full-page miniatures, historiated initials and decorated line endings embellishing the compendium of sacred texts, this is in every respect a monumental study of rare breadth and depth. Stahl's monographic format grounds what is in effect an examination of a wide range of topics, ranging from artistic production in Paris and the history of psalters to private devotional practice and the ideology of royal imagery. Written in elegant but unpretentious prose, it is an engaging book that imparts not only new insights and discursive material but also the wonder and deep fascination that the author himself clearly had for the psalter and its related subjects.

The text, comprising an introduction, five chapters, conclusion and seven appendices, achieves that difficult balance between broad contextual issues arising from the psalter's royal and Parisian associations and the internal material aspects of the manuscript itself. In moving between form and content, the book also parallels the historiography of the time during which it was written, when art history was transformed from a discipline distinguished by formal analysis to one that emphasised an object's multivalent applications in the humanities. While the first two chapters examine the physical qualities of the manuscript, those following consider larger artistic and programmatic issues as well as interpretative schemes. The introduction manages to outline all of these ideas and incorporate a discussion of the psalter's provenance and historiography.

Chapter i provides a codicological and stylistic analysis of the manuscript. Stahl's observations from this work furnish the evidence for his assertion that five artists distributed between two different groups worked in three phases, the last of which was produced by the so-called Saul Master who exhibits the greatest artistic innovation and achievement within the psalter. However, the process of painting in each phase is seen to have constantly involved reevaluation, adjustment and experimentation. Chapter ii opens with an overview of manuscript painting in Paris, giving particular attention to the relation between the art market and the artists known to have been employed by the royal court, which invokes a discussion and revision of Branner's longstanding Manuscript painting in Paris during the reign of Saint Louis. In contrast to Branner, Stahl finds that the ateliers within the Parisian market were fluid and changing in their artistic practices, as exemplified by the diversity within the psalter itself. The multiple revisions, corrections and improvements that Stahl identifies leads to his conclusion that the painters of the Saint Louis Psalter were not the most experienced miniaturists on the Parisian scene, particularly when compared with the technical consistency and virtuosity of the painting in the Isabella Psalter (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, ms 300), with which it shares many formal attributes. The seven appendices contain the technical details of these two chapters allowing the reader to observe exactly how and why the author has come to these conclusions.

Chapter iii situates the psalter's painting within the wider artistic milieu of thirteenth-century Parisian art as a whole. Stahl moves beyond mere identification of sources and comparisons to interpret the possible meanings of the forms selected for the manuscript's illustrations. Thus, the distinctive architectural prosceniums that evoke contemporary Rayonnant buildings and occupy a third of the full-page miniatures are understood not only as elaborate framing devices but rather as functional tools that place the illustrated Old Testament subjects in contemporary times and encourage relevant moralising and political readings of them. Another fascinating contribution in this chapter is Stahl's interpretation of the legends preceding the images as an example of a thirteenth-century narrative reading of them, since their descriptions of the illustrated scenes constitute a form of reception. The discussion of the psalter's relation to contemporary ivories, reliquaries, sculpture and architecture illustrates the numerous correspondences among the different media, the extraordinary ‘artistic integration’ that characterises Parisian art of the late thirteenth century.

Chapter iv offers an overview of the history of Old Testament illustration in psalters and describes the conduits for its interpretation in thirteenth-century Paris. Notably, the illustrated cycles in English psalters from as far back as the tenth and eleventh century are discussed as important sources for the royal psalters of twelfth- and thirteenth-century France, so the manuscript that belonged to Saint Louis represents a long tradition which was adapted to serve the needs of its time, place and audience. Throughout the discussion, Stahl also traces the history of royal imagery in psalters: their texts highlighted the legacy of David, the Old Testament king who had a special resonance for thirteenth-century Christian rulers. In describing thirteenth-century interpretations of the Old Testament, Stahl ascribes particular importance to William of Auvergne and Vincent of Beauvais, both close advisers to the king who pioneered the way in which the Old Testament came to serve as a source for a contemporary typology as seen in the moralised Bibles and, more broadly, the Capetian political ideology of divine kingship.

Chapter v examines the cycle of prefatory illustrations as an ideological programme. Integral to Stahl's reading is his conviction (which agrees with that first advanced by William Chester Jordan) about the integrality of the pictorial cycle as a whole. Yet Stahl also highlights its ideological indeterminacy. The pictorial cycle for the king is not predictably self-affirming or legitimising; as a whole, it expresses the gravity of the responsibilities that come with kingship and the thirteenth-century expiation of the anxiety arising from this predicament: humility and repentance as prescribed by the Psalms themselves.

The conclusion highlights the psalter's innovations in artistry and in content. While monographs tend to privilege the uniqueness of the object, Stahl remains ever cautious throughout in his effort to situate this magnificent manuscript within its broader local and historical context while also affirming that it is nevertheless an extraordinary creation. The remaining question is that of the psalter's actual patron and function. Psalters, Stahl reminds us, were usually presented as gifts; thus the heraldry in the historiated initials and line endings of the manuscript's text pages, which exhibit arms from a number of different families in the royal court, suggest that the book could have been produced for the king by a family or familiar of the court. Another possibility arises from the moral thrust of the illustrations; Stahl proposes that in accord with Louis's own didactic concerns towards his family, the psalter could have been donated by the king to his eldest son, Philip iii. The manuscript's association with others similar to it, particularly the so-called Isabella Psalter and the psalter associated with the royal chapel of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (BnF, ms Lat. 10434), as well as other well-known manuscripts in the royal milieu, thus become ever more intriguing as exemplars of the relationships between the people in the court as much as the ideologies that circulated among this exclusive group.

While this review cannot do justice to the years of painstaking research and thought that went into this book, it is not an overstatement to say that Harvey Stahl's monograph is an extremely erudite study of this broadly conceived subject. Like the psalter itself, this book is also an enduring testimonial to the much beloved scholar who wrote it, one that will remain the definitive study of the manuscript for generations.

A final note on the book's facture: with no less than ninety-six figures in the text and, following that, an almost complete illustrated facsimile of the prefatory cycle, the historiated initials, and a number of full-page illustrations of the line endings, all printed to scale on thick paper in high-quality colour, in addition to the substantial text and seven technical appendices, Pennsylvania State University Press has been extremely generous in its production of this book and should be commended for it. Not enough books with such long-term interests are published. Because of the care put into the form as well as the content, Harvey Stahl's Picturing kingship will be an invaluable reference for many years to come.